Feeding at the government trough

by | Aug 24, 2015 | Editor's Blog, NCGA | 5 comments

The Ashley Madison hack has provided plenty of fodder for the internet over the past few days. It exposed hypocrites like the already ethically-challenged Josh Duggar and at least one Christian youtube crusader. Even the head of the Louisiana GOP had an account.

Here in North Carolina, the Civitas Institute reported that more than 30 state or local officials had an account. Civitas was quick to condemn the accounts as a waste of government resources. “This is just the tip of the iceberg of government employees using taxpayer resources for personal use. Unfortunately, people will be distracted by the salacious nature of this abuse and not the fact that North Carolinians are being taxed to support government at all levels using state and local resources to engage in this activity at work as opposed to serving the people of North Carolina,” they said in a press release.

Tip of the iceberg? Please. Nobody wasted any state resources and there’s no evidence that the accounts were set up on government time. It didn’t cost the state one red cent for those people to use their state email addresses to sign up to have an extramarital affair. It proves that we hire some people who aren’t smart enough to get a gmail account when engaging in nefarious internet activities, but that’s about it.

In reality, it was just an excuse for Civitas to beat up on public employees. By their reckoning all government workers are just shiftless layabouts sucking off the taxpayer teat who are too lazy to get real jobs in the private sector. The bullies at Civitas are once again making blanket statements demeaning the work ethic of government employees with little to back up their claims. Their goal is to humiliate and demoralize public workers who can’t fire back. 

If they really want to go after somebody for feeding at the taxpayer trough, they should be going after House Speaker Tim Moore. Moore just took a gig as Cleveland County’s attorney. He’ll be paid a retainer of $25,000 plus $250 an hour. The Board of Commissioners also hired a full-time attorney, who is called “assistant County Attorney,” to take care of most of the work. County Commission meetings are held on Tuesday nights while legislative session run Monday to Thursday, so Moore will either be ignoring his job in Cleveland County or the one Raleigh since he can’t be both places at once. Shelby, where meetings are held, is three hours drive from Raleigh.

It sure looks like Moore just got a job that pays him a minimum of $25,000 and he won’t have to even do anything–or not much of anything. Moore is also the attorney for the Cleveland County Water District, another taxpayer-funded job. He’s also getting paid $38,000 to be a legislator and Speaker of House, all at taxpayer expense.

If Civitas really wants to complain, they should start with Moore. He’s patched together enough government gigs to pay him a nice salary that funds his political career. If they want to pick on somebody, they should pick on somebody their own size and quit looking like just another bunch of conservative hypocrites. 

5 Comments

  1. Radagast

    I would point out that many of the names (especially those of “married” women), were falsely placed on this Ashley Madison Cheating Website. Granted, some of the females who voluntarily went on the website were mutts, who had to sneak up on a glass of water, just to get a drink.
    Curiously, many of the “subscribers” were male government employees. Ergo: they were fat smelly, computer nerd guys with terminal acne, who couldn’t get laid, even if they were in Thailand, and offered “beau-coups” bucks for any drunken 14 year old bar girl with a blind fold on. (and even then, they would have trouble getting “lead in the pencil”).
    They are the ones who sit in their parent’s basement in their underwear, and masturbate over the internet.
    “Radagast, shame on you!
    Ayuh! But the truth shall set you free!

  2. Dorothy Kirk

    I’ve never worked for the government but I do know that employees of corporations waste tons of time looking at the internet … sports news, Facebook, personal email, etc.

    Although it may not have cost much for a person to sign up using their government email address, but it’s pretty likely that they’re looking at salacious sites and arranging assignations while they’re on the job.

    Let’s hope our government IT systems block sites like Ashley Madison, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to prevent employees from wasting time playing on the internet. If they don’t, then the employer is not as smart as it should be.

    I don’t disagree that they should go after some of the more egregious examples of ‘Feeding at the government trough’ but we don’t need to trivialize the Ashley Madison situation for that to happen.

  3. Groovy

    And a couple years from now he’ll get a lobbying job and make ten times that.

  4. Max

    According to the N&O:

    “Moore’s contract requires him to attend the board’s meetings, which take place on Tuesday evenings twice a month. He’s said he’ll ‘try to be at as many of those meetings as I can,’ even when he presides over the House earlier the same day.”

    That seems like a pretty forgiving interpretation of the word “required.” I wonder if he will be that forgiving to the unemployed workers that are now “required” to make five employer contacts per week.

  5. Apply Liberally

    Well said.
    Groups like Civitas know no bounds when it comes to making huge leaps of logic to ridicule government programs or employees. It is fully engaged in the ALEC “group-think” of disparaging government and public programs 24/7. Its painting the Ashley Madison matter as another fleecing of the taxpayer is just plain ideological drivel.

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